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Overview - Ken Follett's extraordinary, #1 New York Times bestselling historical epic, the Century Trilogy, reaches its sweeping, passionate conclusion. In Fall of Giants and Winter of the World , Ken Follett followed the fortunes of five international families American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh as they made their way through the twentieth century.Read more...

Ken Follett's extraordinary, #1New York Timesbestselling historical epic, the Century Trilogy, reaches its sweeping, passionate conclusion. InFall of GiantsandWinter of the World, Ken Follett followed the fortunes of five international families American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh as they made their way through the twentieth century. Now they come to one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the 1960s through the 1980s, from civil rights, assassinations, mass political movements, and Vietnam to the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution and rock and roll. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffmann discovers she s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives . . . . George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy s Justice Department and finds himself in the middle of not only the seminal events of the civil rights battle but a much more personal battle of his own . . . . Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he d imagined . . . . Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Krushchev, becomes an agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tanya, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw and into history."

Publishers Weekly® Reviews

Reviewed in:
Publishers Weekly,
page
.

Review Date:
2014-06-23

Reviewer:
Staff

In the ambitious, commanding capstone to his multigenerational Century Trilogy (after Winter of the World), Follett expertly chronicles the pivotal events of the closing decades of the 20th century through the eyes of a vast array of deftly-drawn characters, all suffering the slings and arrows of a world marred by war and global unrest. Among them is Rebecca Hoffman, a good-natured school teacher in Communist Berlin, who discovers in 1961 that her secretive husband, Hans, is a clandestine Stasi agent and has been spying on her for years. When she eventually confronts him, he angrily vows to destroy her family. Elsewhere, mixed-race, civil-rights-minded George Jakes forsakes a lucrative law career to work for Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, then battles racial inequality as a congressman. Dmitri “Dimka” Dvorkin, an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, finds himself embroiled in heated U.S.-Soviet nuclear political power plays and his sister, Tanya, thrusts herself into the fray of governmental global turmoil. Cameron Dewar, a senator’s grandson, also becomes politically active with espionage on his mind while Rebecca’s brother, the musician Walli, must choose between a rising-star career in rock-and-roll and his pregnant lover, Karolin. Sweeping through the Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan administrations, Follett’s smooth page-turner concludes in 2008 with an epilogue set on the night of President Obama’s electoral victory. This mesmerizing final installment is an exhaustive but rewarding reading experience dense in thematic heft, yet flowing with spicy, expertly paced melodrama, character-rich exploits, familial histrionics, and international intrigue. (Sept.)

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